This is the first raid to implement the Flexible Raid system, which allow groups of anywhere between 10 and 30 players to raid the instance. Flexible raid was originally its own difficulty between Raid Finder and normal (now called heroic), but with the release of patch 6.0 it was renamed normal and the scaling technology was applied to the Raid Finder and heroic (now) difficulties. The old heroic difficulty was also renamed Mythic and is the only non-flexible raid difficulty with a set amount of 20 players.

The Raid Finder version (and the original flexible version) of the Siege of Orgrimmar is divided into 4 different wings, with each wing originally opening a week (or two) after the previous. See the list of opening dates for details.

As of March 18 2014 (or later in the week for non-US regions), Siege of Orgrimmar is now able to be raided cross-realm with BattleTag or Real ID friends.[1]

Description from site

Heroes of the Alliance and the Horde have tested their mettle against the might of the sha, the Thunder King, and each other, but neither side could have predicted the boundless atrocities the Horde's warchief would commit.

Garrosh Hellscream's reckless thirst for power has led him to do the unthinkable: from beneath the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, he has seized the desiccated heart of an Old God to use as a tool of war, unleashing horrors upon the sacred valley. The brazen warchief has also turned against other members of the Horde to create a purely orcish force of his own. Now this "true Horde" is amassing strength within Orgrimmar's iron ramparts. With Garrosh bent on total victory, he plans to demonstrate the potency of the true Horde by conquering not just the Alliance but the whole of Azeroth.

It is up to you to purify the vale and bring Garrosh to justice. Should you fail, the frenzied legions of his true Horde will raze all you have ever known and mutate Azeroth into a hellish new Outland.

Dungeon Journal

The tensions stoked by Garrosh Hellscream's arrogance have reached a boiling point with the destruction unleashed upon the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Leaders of the Alliance and Horde lay siege to Hellscream's capital in order to topple the ruthless Warchief once and for all!

The raid starts in the unearthed lower section of Mogu'shan Palace in Vale of Eternal Blossoms, named the Pools of Power. The raiders must first cleanse Immerseus, a living essence of the Vale's pools that was corrupted by Sha influence, before proceeding further in order to locate the source of corruption. After returning to the surface, the group must fight the fallen protectors of the Vale at the place where the Golden Pagoda once stood, before proceeding to what remains of Big Blossom Excavation and the Titan vault that was uncovered before the disaster. Inside, the construct Norushen and the Sha of Pride await.

After dealing with the Sha threat to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, the group is deployed in Durotar in order to lay siege to Orgrimmar, locate Garrosh Hellscream and put an end to his scheming. Upon arriving at Bladefist Bay, the raid encounters the Dragonmaw Clan defending the harbor, along with their warlord, Zaela and her proto-drake, Galakras. After defeating them, the attacking force moves inland to rendezvous with the Darkspear Rebellion besieging the gates, and then face off against the Iron Juggernaut, a war machine crafted by the Blackfuse Company.

With the Juggernaut destroyed, additional forces arrive to engage the Kor'kron forces outside, while the raid proceeds inside the city. The streets of Orgrimmar are in chaos since the martial law was issued. Most of the prisoners were already brutally executed and impaled by the Kor'kron to demonstrate the fate of anyone who would oppose Garrosh and his regime. Nazgrim has retreated to the Ragefire Chasm, and the raid faces off against the Kor'kron Dark Shaman: Kardris and Haromm, before proceeding further into the city. Along the way, the majority of Orgrimmar's citizens can be seen barricaded themselves inside their homes, others were taken captive, such as Gamon. Nearly every warlock residing in the Cleft of Shadow was executed by hanging.

The raid finally arrives to the Ragefire Chasm, where Nazgrim with several orcs make their last stand to protect the entrance to the Underhold. The raid do battle with Nazgrim, once he is defeated an elevator which leads down to Garrosh's Underhold will reveal itself. Here, the raid battle against he Kor'kron's elite before coming to a circular room.

Here, in the middle of this room, the raid will find Malkorok who has been twisted into a dire orc by the power of the Heart of Y'Shaarj. After a fierce battle against the Kor'kron's leader, the raid will come across the last remnants of the Kor'kron, and a three-way
passage will be seen.

The only door open leads to the right, and a mechanism which houses artifacts and relics stolen from Pandaria. Activating the mechanism will lead to players having to split into two separate groups in order to deal with the mantid and mogu spoils. After overcoming this, going down the corridor leads the raid to the Menagerie.

Located here is the giant devilsaur, Thok the Bloodthirsty. His Kor'kron jailers cannot contain him, so it is up to the raid to deal with the giant devilsaur and anything else the Menagerie holds.

After this, continuing back past the spoils console and back into the large room will lead the raid to the domain of Helix Blackfuse and the Blackfuse Company. After dealing with several waves of adds, Blackfuse himself will become attackable. After using his own engineering weapons against him, the traitorous goblin will fall, and it is time to enter the final pssageway in the main section of the Underhold.

Upon opening the door, there will be two mantid mini-bosses, followed by an entire room crawling with mantid. They must all be dealt with, along with Kovok, Kaz'tik the Manipulators' prize Kunchong. Kovok's presence means only one thing: the paragons are not far behind. Not heeding the warning given to the Wakener by Kil'ruk, proceeding will result in an ambush by the Paragons of Klaxxi themselves. As Kil'ruk dies, he claims that he and the Wakener will meet again.

Despite their prowess in battle, they will be defeated by the raid, who only have one obstacle left - Garrosh himself. The only door on the opposite side of the entrance reveals the last strands of the Kor'kron followed by ichors cursed by Y'Shaarj itself. Fighting these will lead to Garrosh and Thrall. Garrosh defeats Thrall in single combat once again and then becomes attackable by the raid.

After doing battle with Garrosh he will lie unconscious. Thrall will be ready to deliver the final blow, only to be stopped by Varian and Taran Zhu. After being denied the hero's death he so desperately wanted, Hellscream is led away in chains to stand trial in Pandaria.

Tom Chilton on redesigning Orgrimmar

The Siege of Orgrimmar marks the first time we've seen an endgame raid on a capital city. What were some of the challenges of putting that raid together?

Certainly some of the biggest challenges were that Orgrimmar as a layout was never really designed to be somewhere that people fight -- same case with Stormwind or Undercity or anywhere else. We architected those way back ten years ago, there's not really a whole lot of thought that went into the layout as a raid zone.

I think with a raid in Stormwind, I'd spend most of my time falling in the canal.

(laughs) Yeah, no doubt. So there were really two big challenges -- one of them was that the layout wasn't designed for raiding. And then the second challenge was that we wanted players to feel like they were sieging a capital city, yet at the same time we know that players want to experience new content. If the whole thing were literally just a romp around Orgrimmar, it would feel like, you know we hear a lot of that "Oh Blizzard's just lazy, they just wanted to re-hash content, they didn't want to give us new stuff, blah blah blah" -- all that kind of stuff.

So we knew that -- and to be fair, players do want to see new stuff right, they want to see new environments, they want to be inspired by locations. It's really cool to have that epic dungeon crawl feeling in a raid. So we wanted to make sure we delivered on both of those fantasies -- both the raiding of Orgrimmar itself, and then also delivering a new section that they have never seen before, that felt really epic and awe-inspiring.[2]

Hotfix (2014-10-15): "Resolved an issue where an excessive number of items could drop at once from non-boss enemies in Siege of Orgrimmar when Personal Loot was enabled."

Hotfix (2014-10-14): "Auction house NPCs in Siege of Orgrimmar's should no longer be level 100."

Patch 6.0.2 (2014-10-14): Heroic Siege of Orgrimmar achievements have been renamed to Mythic according to the new difficulty structure (e.g. “Heroic: Malkorok” will now be “Mythic: Malkorok”). Ahead of the Curve and Cutting Edge achievements are unobtainable.

Hotfix (2014-03-18): "Cross-realm raid groups have been enabled for Siege of Orgrimmar on both Normal and Heroic difficulty. A forum thread has been created with more information on this change."

Cross-Realm raid browser (located in the Social Pane under Other Raids on the Raid tab) now has a minimum item level requirement for players attempting to list for Siege of Orgrimmar on Flexible raid difficulty.

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